In case you missed it, the official teaser trailer for Deluxe Galaga Enhanced dropped yesterday. Some of you had questions, so let me clear some things up.
This is essentially a recompile from the decompiled assembler code of the original 1990s Commodore Amiga shoot'em up, Deluxe Galaga from Edgar Vigdal.
The game was extremely popular - Top 100 lists everywhere ... hit magazine cover disks (remember those?) and since the 90s has been a game people keep going back to play.
Around 1999, Edgar moved on to other things, including the PC/IOS port "Warblade" and sort of left Deluxe Galaga in the bin. I asked to be the game's official custodian, bought the domain and have been keeping the game alive and remembered ever since.
A couple months ago, a guy named David reached out and said he had decompiled Edgar's game and converted it to C - with builds running on Windows, Mac, Linux and the web.
For a month, we tightened the game up to be the exact same game (Preservation Mode), then created an adjacent version with numerous things that Edgar left behind (bugs, some intended logic that never worked, etc) along with a couple of small QOL fixes - known as Restoration Mode.
Then the last few weeks, we got crazy and thought we could really add some new life to this thing and started brainstorming what we could do with the game that keeps in spirit with the original, but offer real value to both new AND returning fans.
First, the voice pack. Edgar had a couple of voice packs - both were incomplete; they were probably created for early builds of the game that were not feature complete. A male voice and a female voice, the latter being the MOST complete version. People seem to love my voice ("Dude, you should be on the radio") so I started just recording a few lines to see how it sounded. The dev, David, loved it and asked me to keep recording. At the end of the day, 48 voice lines were re-recorded - about 15 that are brand new to this release.
Second, music. Lord have mercy ... Deluxe Galaga has been released in various outlets with various changes. Not just ECS vs AGA, but with and without the voice packs (or one or the other) but also different MUSIC. Various add on MOD files were prebaked into some releases - so YOU may have played DG with completely different music than the actual release. Over the decades, I've gathered all these MODs and made them available on DeluxeGalaga.com for manual insertion into the game. With this recompile, we've built the MODs right into the game! Yep, you can choose which one you want, relive YOUR DG past - or play them all in rotation.
And who could forget ... ENHANCED MODE! Listen, no one plays in 4:3 anymore. Widescreen support is a must in 2026. But if you know mods and recompiles, trying to convert 4:3 into 16x9 can break the hell out of the game - so we decided to frame the 4:3 gameplay, move all the HUD elements off of it and create a real masterpiece of score, play and statistics. Once you've played it this way? You'll never want to go back. Trust me on this. Along with 16x9 support, we added two new power up drops - a Damage booster and Homing Missiles (you may recognize them from the Hurry Up ship - time for a little payback). Damage boost helps nurse a failing game back to health. Frequently, dying at later stages can mean the game is pretty much over. Damage boost can give your gimped single shot, no speed havin' ass a chance to get to the next Warp and spend some of that cash you've had banked. We've also added a new Secret ... it is rare to see, but oh man .. we can't wait for you to experience it for the first time.
Finally, let's talk about those skulls. Affectionately known as "SUCKER!" because if you pick them up, you lose all your crap. But, there is an existing secret that collecting all three colored skulls gets you. However, those skulls no longer go to waste. When you go to continue the game with your 2 bonus credits, the skulls may provide you with bonuses on re-birth. There are a lot of combinations and a lot of rewards - we're going to let you find those out for yourself. At least, if you've accidentally grabbed a skull, it can benefit you later.
Probably the best part of this whole thing - regardless of which mode you play - you can play it wherever you want WITHOUT the overhead of trying to set up an Amiga emulator, buying (or stealing) Kickstart files from Cloanto. Native ports for Windows, Mac, Linux (with a little somethin' extra for Steam Deck users) as well as a web version so you can play instantly without installing or downloading anything. Pretty sweet.